Gustavus Adolphus writes in a letter that the war would be long drawn out and stop from exhaustion. The original purpose of the war was the suppression of the Protestant faith, but the victories of Gustavus Adolphus made the Catholics hopeless. Also other interests of a political nature rose up, the war passed from a German to a European question. Though there were times when peace might have been made, the side who had the best of it for the moment deemed it folly to stop when victory was in reach. The other side thought it base and cowardly not to continue, as some turn of fortune might repair the losses. Many a war has dragged on after the purpose for which it began had become unattainable, because those who began it were too vain to admit that the objects of the war were impossible from its outset. In a long war also individuals rise up to whom fighting becomes a second nature, who know nothing else but violence and murder. Thus many soldiers were indignant when the Westphalian peace was signed, for they felt they had a vested right to plunder and murder, looking upon a wretched, helpless population as their just prey. A further reason for the long continuation of the war was the very exhaustion of both sides; there was not enough strength on either side to strike a decisive blow, nor sufficient energy left to make a vigorous effort for peace, making it seem useless to try. In the earlier and middle period of the war there were many cries for peace, but in the last eight years there was a terrible silence of death and such utter desperation that no one dared to speak of peace, so great was the exhaustion. The soldiers decreased as it became more and more difficult to recruit and feed them; the military operations grew feebler and more desultory, the fighting more inconclusive, though the misery did not diminish. But while the people and soldiers had become tired of the interminable struggle and wanted peace, many of the diplomats did not appear to desire it. CAUSES OF THE WAR. The great length of the war gradually revealed its very hopelessness and uselessness, creating a general desire for rest and peace, transforming and weakening the religious movements out of which the war had arisen. The principle of private judgment, coming from the Reformation, had had time to develop and undermine the ideas of temporal rights and duties common to both parties, while many ideas first conceived by the Reformation but suppressed at the time, had at last commenced to grow through the long-continued tribulations.